Unicode itself is wonderful. What stinks is that it's been implemented several different ways over the years, and different systems continue to fight with each other about it. I recently had the embarrassment of publishing a story online containing the phrase "Les Mis&eacute;rables"

Agreed. It's most unfortunate that UTF-8 wasn't invented until four years or so after Unicode started to be put together, and a more than a year after the first version of the unicode standard was published.

I suspect that if UTF-8 had been invented at the same time, we'd never have had the dread byte ordering problems of UTF-16 and UTF-32. (Nor, come to that, the dreadful surrogate pairs of UTF-16.)

My cat is a juvenile delinquent! She's a thief! And we can't find her stash!

It started with pens from the kitchen table.
Then my ear buds from my Kindle Fire.
Then her own collar.
Now several small "stocking stuffer" gifts have vanished!
And another pen!
Threatening her with legal action makes her fall asleep!
Sigh .....

Having read about the SF Gateway sale here on mobileread, I bought a couple of ebooks from the Kobo store yesterday.

I tried to add them to my reader and everything went haywire:

1. Home page showed covers of books in my library I've not looked at for months.
2. The library said I had only 15 titles instead of the 156 that are there on the shelves.
3. The new books weren't showing on the device at all.
4. The book I'm currently reading wasn't anywhere I could find.

So I tried a couple of times to re-sync, download again, re-sync by wifi as well as usb - nothing.

Then I tried powering off and switching on again - success! Everything is back to normal and the new books are there.

I AM NOT HAPPY! Because after the third attempt to sync that didn't work, I'd started to think, "Oooh, what a shame, now I'll have to buy a Glo."

Yesterday decided to dispense with the 'intermediate' trails and go directly to the "very difficult" one......Ford Canyon......Hey, people walk it all time, what could be so difficult?

Gorgeous weather, not many people out, except at the very first, then I was wondering why they all disappeared......trail was fine, rocky and had to watch your step but not a biggie........for the first 3 1/2 miles....then there was a sign.....

"Hikers use caution, hazardous travel conditions beyond this point"

Didn't look dangerous to me.... Stopped to rest, drink a bit, and enjoy the scenery.

Proceeding slowly, I started to get just a bit concerned when the trail started getting a bit steeper, the footing looser, and the rocks bigger.....then came to the point where there are cliffs to one side, and sharp drops to the other.

The rocks in the path got bigger, the footing got looser, the drops got sharper and the freaking path got narrower!!!

And I realized I have a horror of heights.....must have been about the time my balance started going, and my legs started shaking.

Finally came to a point where the path curved, was very very narrow, and there was a huge boulder sticking out into it, making it even narrower with a lovely drop into cholla........and immediately sat down with my back to the cliff.

I can't remember the last time I was so scared.....knew I couldn't go forward, looked back and didn't want to go that way either......so there I was.

Took out my cell phone, texted a dear friend, and told him the stiuation. He called, and talked my down out of my near panic... thats all I needed, really, I knew I'd get down eventually but at that point I had hit a wall. Hey, if nothing else, was looking out at a beautiful vista, the weather was nice, and it was early....no hurry.

I turned around, and made my way slowly down the 3/4 mile or so of that nasty path....some of it on my butt, because going down is way scarier than coming up! Finished the rest on my feet, and logged somewhere between 7-8 miles round trip.....not bad for an old lady.

Lessons learned?

No more Ford Canyon. Have met my match there. Nature wins.

OH, and the tennies that have worked so well on regular rocky paths suck on loose dirt/rock paths.....apparently I"ve worn the soles smooth..... Get some hiking boots.

Things to be grateful for? A friend who doesn't yell at you when you are scared and tells you that you shouldn't have been there in the first place...just talks until you are calm. Had no one been available, I would have calmed down eventually, he made it so much easier.

Glad that it turned out well. REI has a great collection of hiking boots. If you are a member (one time fee of $15 and then buy a pack of gum once a year) you can return anything you buy from them for a full refund, even if it is used. Which gives you great freedom in trying new boots and the like.

They also sell head lamps, emergency blankets, water purifiiers, and all sorts of othe stuff silly people who care pester you about.